


mark  me yours

by Areiton



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, M/M, One-Sided James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark - Freeform, One-Sided Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Pining, Protective James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 16:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20156296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: There are marks--soulmarks and heart marks and life marks--that are deep and abiding and written into the soul, that define the person they mark.Or:They aren't soulmates. And Rhodey doesn't give a damn--Tony ishis.And he--he hasalwaysbeen Tony's.





	mark  me yours

His heart mark is wings. Gunmetal grey and delicately articulated gearwork. They aren't feathers--the wings that spread like a whispered promise across James Rhodes wrists are  _ created _ ,  _ built  _ and he loves them, illogically and fiercely. 

~*~ 

Tony is passed out the first time Rhodey sees his heart  mark, gearwork metal shrapnel embedded bloody in his chest. It makes him stop because that heartmark means tragedy, means blood and death and destruction. They're a dirty bloody promise that is a bitter juxtaposition of Rhodey's gunmetal grey wings. 

He wants to weep, seeing them, and understands, abruptly, why Tony never bares his mark, why he never talks about it about his  _ destiny.  _

His fingers tremble and shake and steady. He cleans the vomit from his face, hands gentle, wrestles him into bed and stays close while Tony sleeps, arms around him like sheltering wings. 

~*~

His mama said heart marks were  _ you _ and everything tied up in your soul that made you into a person. 

Soul marks were different. Soul marks belonged to someone else, marked you as theirs. Not everyone had them. They were prized, rare marks for those souls who  _ belonged  _ to someone else. 

He didn't have one. And he'd never wanted one, was happy with his heart mark and small fading marks of friends and family. 

Tony did. He wore them like armor, both his soul marks flaunted and bared for the world to see, a kind of taunt and challenge both. 

Rhodey touches them once, when they're sitting in his lab and Tony is waving his hands, effusive and effervescent, his favorite way for Tony to be, and they catch his gaze, pull his attention and he reaches, not really planning to, and his fingers brushing against Tony's marks--a star, black with red and gold spiderwebbed throughout. A gleaming blue and red shield with a hint of Tony's signature gearwork on the edges. 

His fingers are gentle, light curious brushes and Tony goes still under them, watching Rhodey's face and when he pulls away, asks, soft and shy the way he only ever is when they're alone, "Do you mind them?" 

"No," he says and it isn't a lie. 

He has never minded anything about Tony. 

~*~ 

The marks belong to Steve Rogers and James Barnes. The greatest--most tragic--soul-bound lovers in history. And Tony wears their marks, bright and brilliant and tragic. 

Soulmarks are a claim, a belonging, but they weren't a promise. 

They were never that.

But he loved Tony Stark, illogically and fiercely.

~*~

Loving Tony wasn’t easy. 

It was fighting his self destructive tendencies, dragging him from labs to sleep and from sleep to class, it was sitting at Howard Stark’s table and smiling without punching the bastard in the face and holding Tony after, when he was drunk and weeping furiously. 

It was watching him fuck his way through half the university and doing nothing to stop him. 

But sometimes it was easy. Listening to him babble about robots and AI’s, about holograms and programming that made his head spin. Building rockets together and fighting about the best way to improve them, to improve  _ planes.  _ Watching bad TV while Tony listened with his head pillowed on Rhodey’s thigh, hair soft under his fingers, a hand wrapped around Rhodey’s ankle, possessive and grounding and gentle. 

Loving Tony wasn’t easy--but when sleepy brown eyes blinked at him, bright and brilliant and soft in the way Tony ever was with  _ him, _ Rhodey couldn’t help but think it was worth it. 

~*~ 

There were a lot of people in and out of Tony's bed. People who didn't care about the marks on his arms, the ones that didn't want anything but a good time and a story to tell. He never minded those people because they took the good times and the presents that meant nothing and vanished into nothing. 

But there were others. 

Tiberius Stone with his cold cold eyes greedy gripping hands and the mark on his ankle that Tony swore was  _ his.  _

There was Sunset with her beautiful smiles and the delicate purr in her voice when she said marks didn't matter. 

There was the parade of hopefuls tattooing Tony's marks on their own arms, nevermind that wasn't how soul marks  _ worked.  _

They weren't matched sets--they were brands of ownership. Tony carried the brands of dead men and whatever the hell his own mark looked like, he didn't know and never would. His soulmates died before he was born. 

"You could wear mine," Tony says one drunk night after Ty has vanished with the payoff Obie shoved at him. 

"What even would that look like?" Rhodey asks, and Tony blinks vodka blurry eyes.

~*~ 

He thinks, if he ever wore Tony's mark on his skin, he'd want it to be his mark as much as Tony's. He'd want to belong and own, claim and be claimed. 

But that's not how marks work and he tucks it down deep, where it can't taunt and tease with what he can't have. 

~*~ 

They kiss, once. 

It's a memory he takes out, shakes out and examines, in the years after--a shiny diamond of perfection so rough and sharp it cuts. 

But in the moment--in the moment JARVIS is a soft unfamiliar hum around and above them and Howard's expectations are a distant worry and Tony is bright with a joy so pure and untouched it makes him ache and when they collide, it's like waves coming together, all fierce and giving and wrapping into each other and Tony is giddy in his arms and his mouth is red and chapped and wide open laughing and 

They kiss. 

Because in that moment he can't imagine doing anything else.

In that moment, and every other moment, he wants this. They kiss and it's wild and electric and soft and gentle. They kiss and Tony whimpers under his lips and licks into his mouth and leans up into him, hands hard and begging and he pulls away first. 

They kiss and the best part isn't Tony's lips or taste or hands. Its the look, soft and dazed and trusting when he smiles up at Rhodey after. 

They kiss--and Tony is his for a heartbeat. 

~*~

He crosses the room in conversation with his CO, ignoring the bustle and chatter of the airmen at their leisure. He tunes most of it out, these days--years of living on bases and in general quarters and hip deep with fifty men has given him the ability to tune out almost everything. 

Not the voice, cocky and smug, on the TV. 

He's never been able to tune out Tony. 

He looks up, a second spared, and drinks him in. Thinner, and tired around the eyes, his hair slicked back and tame in that way Rhodey loathes, too expensive suit. 

He looks like, sounds like, Howard in miniature and it makes his stomach turn. 

Rhodey answers his CO, follows him from the room. It's the first glimpse he's had of Tony for two years, the last he'll have for another six months and it leaves him shaking and achy and furious all over again.

~*~ 

He gets the news when he’s in Philly and he’s on the road in ten minutes. It takes him just over two hours to get to New York, a trip that should take almost three hours, and he still feels impatient, fury and fear crawling under his skin as he slams into the house. 

Tony is in his arms before he can speak, before he can say,  _ I’m so sorry,  _ or  _ what can I do,  _ or any of the other useless things he thought up on the too long drive. Tony is in his arms and Stane is glaring and he’s  _ shaking,  _ and Rhodey’s arms tighten around him, and he whispers, “I’m here, baby. I’m here.” 

He doesn’t leave. Not during the drinking, not during the storm of tears, not during the furious destruction of Howard’s office or the shower he has to help Tony with or dressing him for the funeral, or any of the bullshit that follows. 

He stays close, and he wonders if the wings on his wrist are those of a guardian angel, because he would. 

He would stand between Tony and the world, spread his wings and protect him forever, if only Tony would let him. 

~*~ 

He hates Steve Rogers. 

The man pushes, prods, judges and dismisses, and Tony--Tony stares at him, like this man is the whole world, and Rhodey  _ hates  _ him. 

He sees it once, the marks on Rogers’ arms--the black star with red and gold cracks. And the one on his other arm, a mandala of gear work and twisting metal and he recognizes it, sees Tony’s arc reactor in the twisting turning pieces and layers and it’s so heartbreakingly perfect and  _ right _ it makes him violent. 

He hates it, seeing Tony’s mark on someone who doesn’t want him. 

Because this is what they don’t talk about, with soulmates--it’s a brand, a claim of ownership, and it’s not a guarantee. 

Tony never talks to Steve, about the mark he covers, never presses for a relationship Rogers doesn’t want. 

He covers his own marks, and his eyes are dimmer, sadder, and he leans into Rhodey, sometimes, after Steve leaves, but he never talks about it. 

~*~ 

“I wish you could fly with me,” Rhodey tells him, when they’re young and stupid and he thinks it will always be easy, being with Tony. Before they fight over SI and the Air Force, before the years of silence, before  _ everything _ . 

Tony traced his wings, his heart mark and it wasn’t strange--it was normal, natural, completely fine to trust Tony with this piece of himself. “I will, one day.” 

He didn’t know, then, that it was a promise. 

But he looks at the Iron Man suit and he sees them, flying together. 

He puts on the War Machine armor and they  _ do.  _

Tony traced his wings, when they were young and stupid and didn’t know any better, and now, they fly together, with wings that Tony built for him, and he loves him, loves him,  _ loves him.  _

Heart marks are  _ you _ , and he isn’t sure if his wings are those of a guardian angel or a fighter pilot or the avenging warrior but he thinks--whatever they are, he is what Tony has made him. 

~*~

Tony grins at him, over debriefs and busy rooms, and Rhodey smirks back and races him to the suits. 

Rhodey sees the hurt and grief in Tony’s eyes, when Steve turns away from him, and he tugs Tony into the suit, and they  _ fly.  _ Race each other across the endless blue, soaring so high he thinks they could touch the empty black, and plunging down, listening to each other’s laughter and shrieks and steady heartbeats and Tony is there, always, pulling him out of a endless dive before he can crash into the earth. 

Tony chases him higher and follows him when he falls, and Rhodey thinks--they have each other, and they will always be safe. 

Tony will never let him fall. 

~*~ 

He can’t speak, only smiles for the cameras and his CO and the airmen and the weight of the bar on his chest is choking and crushing, and he can’t  _ speak.  _

The words he can’t say tremble behind clenched teeth and tight pressed lips, until he stumbles into Tony’s workshop and a smile, guileless and bright and so fucking pleased, beams up at him, and he--he doesn’t speak. 

He doesn’t speak. 

He screams. 

~*~ 

It’s still new and raw, this thing where they can work together. He stands stiff at Tony’s side, head pounding, and it feels not quite right, the way it has always felt to stand at Tony’s side for SI and the military, when all he has ever wanted was to stand at Tony’s side, with no strings or motivations, just  _ them _ . 

It’s new and it’s raw and it’s what he wanted, when they were kids and young enough to want things, this, serving as the liaison between the military and SI, and it’s never sat right. 

He thinks of that night, of shouts and threats and ultimatums and screaming, and walking out, and Tony’s furious tears. 

He closes his eyes and smiles and congratulates Tony when the missile works perfect, and it doesn’t sit right, there is something  _ wrong _ buzzes under his skin like a bee and his marks  _ itch _ . 

He smiles weakly when Tony sends him to a different Humvee and then the world explodes. 

~*~ 

They get drunk, after Steve finally tells Tony, flat out and undeniable,  _ no. _

Rhodey wasn’t in New York for it, but he gets Pepper’s call, frantic, and flies out immediately. He lands on the roof of Stark Tower and pulls Tony into his arms and the other man is crying, these big silent tears, soundless sobs that shake him in Rhodey’s arms. 

It always shocks him, how small Tony is in his arms, when he has always felt larger than life. 

He holds him until the tears slow and stop and then they drink, cheap whiskey and bottom shelf tequila, the only goal the sweet oblivion of intoxication, and when he’s tipsy and leaning on Rhodey’s legs, head tipped back at the sky, Tony asks, “Why doesn’t he love me?” 

There’s an answer. A real one, about marks and destiny and fate and choice, and he should probably say it. 

He thinks, even stone cold sober, he wouldn’t. 

He says, “Because he’s a fucking idiot.” 

Tony blinks at him, blurry beautiful broken. “Anyone who doesn’t love you? A fucking idiot, baby.” 

~*~ 

He screams until he’s got nothing left to say, and Tony screams back, all righteous fury and indignant disbelief, and he storms out. 

It’s different from their other fights. 

It feels different, and profound, and insurmountable. 

He storms out and it feels like leaving, like  _ leaving _ . 

Pepper is standing upstairs, pale faced and trembling and he pauses. 

She’s all he’ll have, if Rhodey goes. It’s a terrifying thought. “Let me see your heart mark,” he says, brusque and somewhere in Philadelphia his mama is having a heart attack over his lack of manners. 

Two spots of pink color Pepper’s cheeks, but he waves a brisk hand, and she carefully unbuttons her blouse, pulls it aside to bare the mark on her left collarbone. 

It’s a pale pink, almost bleeding into the skin it’s so unobtrusive. Filigree metalwork in a delicate anatomical heart. 

He stares at it for so long Pepper huffs and drags her shirt to rights, buttons it up and Rhodey blinks at her. 

“Take care of him,” he chokes and then he leaves. 

~*~ 

The truth is--and this is a truth he doesn’t talk about, doesn’t tell anyone. It’s enough that he knows and Tony knows and neither of them ever speak of it--the truth is. He loves Tony. 

The truth is, he  _ wants _ Tony on his skin. He sees Steve’s mark and Barnes’, sees Tony’s on Rogers’ skin and he hates it, hates them, and he  _ aches _ for that metal work mandala. He aches for Tony, etched indelible and irremovable and permanent into his skin. 

He loves Tony and he thinks--if they wore each other’s marks, maybe Tony would love him too. 

He loves Tony and he thinks, viciously pleased, that Tony loves him and not because ink on their skin demanded it. Tony  _ chose  _ him, the way he had never chosen Barnes or Rogers. 

~*~ 

They fuck, once.

Just the once. 

It’s in the five year stretch when they barely speak, shoved together only by the military and SI and circumstances neither can control. 

Rhodey thinks it’s  _ because _ they’ve gone so long without the other, that they finally break. 

Stane vanishes during the aftermath of a successful weapons demonstration, off with Rhodey’s CO to negotiate prices or logistics or whatever the hell they chattered about that ended with Stark missiles in DOD hands. 

And they were left together, strangers who knew too much about each other, a strange and uncomfortable kind of intimacy. 

They drank, but not so much that he could blame it on that. 

They talked, but not so serious he could blame it on that. 

They walked, together, and at the door to his private bunk that was miles below what Tony was used to, what he had never in all the time Rhodey had known him complained about, Tony looked at him and said, “I miss you, Rhodes.” 

It was that. 

The way he said it, the way he shaped his name, the name Tony never used. 

It was that. 

He kissed Tony, hard and hungry and begging and Tony--Tony bent to it, sweet and pliant the way he had always dreamed Tony would be, biting and hungry the way he  _ knew _ he’d be. 

He pushed Tony into his little room, onto his tiny, creaky bed, and sprawled across him, hungry and desperate and it was only Tony’s voice, begging and near tears that made him stop, slow. 

“Please,” Tony whispered into the space between their mouths, breathing the words into Rhodey’s hungry lips. “Please, I want it to last.”

“How long?” Rhodey whispered, and it felt like begging and his body flashed hot and desperate when Tony whimpered, wordless, against his mouth, an answer to honest to be spoken. 

They fucked, or maybe they made love, or maybe it was both. 

They shared that tiny creaky bed and Tony rode him, tears bright in his eyes, mark bloody and stark and open to his gaze, and Rhodey whispered into his hair, when Tony was asleep, sprawled sticky across his chest, whispered the words he wasn’t brave enough to say aloud. 

“I love you. Only you.” 

~*~ 

He didn’t have a soulmark. 

He didn’t want one. 

He thought, sometimes, that he couldn’t have one--he had given his soul to Tony Stark too long ago to share it with anyone else. 

~*~ 

Tony goes to DC after SHIELD falls, when the Potomac is still a mess of burning wreckage, when the Pentagon is scrambling and Congress is screaming for answers and SHIELD is trying desperately to put their burning house out while Natasha rained fire and fury, a life of shattered promises and betrayal, down like an avenging angel. 

Tony goes to DC, Rhodey flying at his side, because they aren’t together, Tony and Rogers, but they are soulmates, are marked into each other’s skin, and he can’t  _ not  _ go. 

He goes alone, into that crowded hospital room where Steve Rogers lays too big in a narrow bed, and he comes out, and Rhodey--

Rhodey looks at him, at the shock on his friend’s face, the way he is pale and drawn and trembling, and it doesn’t match the radiant smile on Steve’s face, that he is doing nothing to hide. 

Rhodey draws Tony into his arms and holds him, shuddering, as the hospital bustles around them and Steve Rogers grins like a man given a second shot at life, and Tony--Tony never cries. He just shakes, a fine full body shiver that makes Rhodey furious and worried and  _ ache.  _

He trembled, just like this, when his parents died, and when Rhodey found him in the desert. 

“Tell me,” he coaxes, because there is nothing he would not face, nothing he would not hear, for Tony. That he would not share, with Tony. 

Tony’s lips are hot against his throat and his fingers are wrinkling his uniform and he doesn’t cry, not once. “Barnes. He’s still alive.” 

~*~ 

His mama told him that grief marks people. 

Not the way heart marks and soulmarks do, not even the fading fleeting marks made by friends and family and life. 

Grief marked you in a way that was harder to notice, not ink in the skin, but shadows on the soul. It was easy to hide, and easy to ignore. 

He never understood that, not really, not until Tony. 

Grief marked Tony in thousand dollar ties, knotted to perfection. Shiny shoes and tailored suits and sunglasses, ridiculous and over the top. 

He wore it in girls on his arm and boys in his bed and stains on his hands, blood and oil both, and exhaustion in his beautiful eyes and a smile that never reached his lips. 

As well as he knew Tony, as much as he loved him--it took  _ years _ , for him to see the way that grief marked him, the way it was writ large in his exuberant sarcastic wit and hidden deep in his brilliance and inventions and only ever shed, truly banished for the space of a few hours, when Tony smiled at Rhodey, and laughed with Pepper and the world felt very far away. 

Maybe, he thinks, watching Tony sleep, it isn’t the world that is far away--maybe they are far from the world. 

~*~

Sam Wilson doesn’t have a soulmark. He has a heart mark that Rhodes sees in snatches and half-caught glimpses, silver and blue and red whisps and swirls. He doesn’t ask, because he does have some manners and you don’t ask about people’s heart marks. 

He  _ likes _ Sam, though. 

Likes that he’s friendly and loyal and steady, grounding compared to Steve and all his shit, compared to Bucky Barnes and his violence. 

Sam revolves around Steve, around Bucky by extension, and he doesn’t have a mark--not even a fleeting Life Mark--that makes him Steve’s but he is. 

Not because Steve is writ into his skin, but because he loves Steve, pure and simple and complicated. 

Rhodey  _ likes _ Sam, because he understands that kind of loyalty, that kind of devotion. He’s lived it for longer than Wilson has been alive. 

~*~ 

He tells Tony he loves him. 

It’s easy, a currency he has no problem spending because this is endless, his love for Tony. 

He tells Tony he loves him when they’re idiots, young and dumb and still in college. He tells him when he holds Tony after the funeral, shaking and sobbing. 

He spits it with curses when he drags Tony home from the bar, when he cleans up the mess Ty left behind, when he falls into Rhodey’s bed and curls close, drunk and sobbing. 

He murmurs it when they’re happy and screams it when they fight, and chokes on it when they don’t speak for five long years. 

He doesn’t say it, after Afghanistan, but he doesn’t need to, doesn’t need paltry words that will never convey everything he feels. 

And when Steve runs, chases Bucky for years while Tony fights his demons and sobriety and all the people who say he isn’t enough, the Avengers are not enough--he says it. 

“I will always love you,” he murmurs. 

Tony curls in his arms and he thinks, there was a time Tony didn’t believe him. 

He does, now. 

~*~

He arrests Steve, in a European city falling apart, and there’s something viciously pleased, petty and small and undeniable, seeing Steve Rogers in custody, seeing Barnes locked away. 

These men who never wanted the one thing he can’t live without. 

He arrests them and it all goes to hell. There’s a moment, when Tony faces off with the Winter Solider in nothing but a three-piece suit and a back-up gauntlet that Rhodey thinks his heart actually stops. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Tony says. They’re waiting, hovering in the air above a German airport and he’s giving Rhodey an out. 

Since the day they met, Tony has been giving Rhodey an out. 

“I’m not doing this because I have to,” he says. “I’m doing this because I’ve had your back in every bar brawl and fight you’ve gotten yourself into since you were fourteen. I’m not going to back down now.” 

Tony doesn’t say anything, but then--he doesn’t need to. 

The fight is vicious, brutal. 

Steve and Barnes are running and like he can’t quite help himself, Tony is chasing and Rhodey is a step behind, desperate to protect him, because Tony has never had a lick of sense when it comes to the men inked into his soul. 

When he falls--

When he falls, he says, “Tony.” 

When he falls, he hears Tony’s scream, and he thinks,  _ no, no, god no, don’t make me leave him.  _

He says, “Tony,” like a prayer, like a benediction and plea and prayer and he falls. 

~*~

“You’re in my spot,” Tony says. There are dried tear-tracks on his face, and he looks beautiful and like hell and he’s bitching and Rhodey knows what that means. 

“About time we switched it up.” There have been too many times he’s stood at the bedside and watched Tony, broken and bleeding. 

Tony makes a noise that starts as a laugh and hitches into a sob, and Rhodey pulls him close, holds him as Tony cries. 

“You fucking idiot,” he weeps and Rhodey makes a soft noise of agreement. “You should have gone  _ home.”  _

“I was where I wanted to be,” he murmurs, and kisses Tony’s hair. “I’m always where I want to be, when I’m at your side.” 

“Fucking  _ idiot _ ,” he says. 

“You love me,” Rhodey teases, loopy on the good drugs and Tony’s face goes soft the way it does, when he’s very honest. 

“I do.” 

~*~ 

His heart mark is gunmetal wings, spread on his wrists, and he knew, always, that the sky belong to him. 

He loves it, loves flying, but there is nothing quite like flying with Tony. Soaring across wide open blue, chasing each other and hearing that delighted laugh in his ear, and the gasp Tony makes, when Rhodey nudges him, wraps around him and plunges toward the ground, a free fall that is broken only when Tony throws out his hands and spins them back toward the never-ending sky. 

He flies and they fall, together. 

Tony asks, once, curious, eyes bright, if it scared him, to fall with him. 

Rhodey laughed and shook his head, “I’ve been falling with you most of my life, Tones. It’s always going to terrify me, but not the way you think.” 

“How, then?” 

Rhodey shrugs. “You know that moment when we’re falling and your stomach is flipping and you know you’re safe but you feel more alive than any other time in your life?” 

Tony nods and Rhodey smiles. “That’s how you always make me feel.” 

~*~ 

He comes back from Siberia, brought back by Peter and Happy and FRIDAY. He comes home broken, bleeding and heartbroken in a way that he wasn’t even after Afghanistan and DC. 

He comes home beaten. 

Peter scoots their hospital beds together and Rhodey twists their fingers together, and wishes he could hold him, when Tony stares, blank and dry-eyed. 

“I don’t want them,” he says, finally. “I’m done wanting my soulmates to love me.” 

~*~ 

There are marks--soulmarks and heart marks and life marks--that are deep and abiding and written into the soul, that define the person they mark. 

He has gunmetal wings, delicately articulated metal arches, on his wrists--Tony was marked into his soul, into  _ who _ he was, before he ever dreamed of soulmarks. 

And Tony was never writ into his skin with fleeting life marks--but he didn’t need to be. 

He wishes, sometimes, that Tony wore his soulmark--but he thinks, this, this isn’t so bad. Tony in his bed, his smile bright and welcoming in the workshop, his mouth open and wet and panting for him, and the marks he wears on his skin--bloody metal shrapnel that means he survived, that he  _ will _ survive, will  _ always _ come home, the mark of two loves who rejected him, and still his heart beats, full of love, the life marks that Peter and Happy and his bots and Pepper all leave in his skin, a life full and happy and  _ good _ \--they don’t define him. They tell a story, but Tony--Tony defines himself. 

~*~ 

Tony shows it to him, when they’re laying in bed. Rhodey’s fingers are pulling, druggingly slow, through his hair, and he’s considering the advantages of the man he loves, naked in his arms, and mourning the refractory period of his youth and Tony says, “What do you think of this?” 

He blinks, because it doesn’t immediately make sense. 

It focuses slowly. 

Wings. Gunmetal grey and scarlet, edged in gold. Made of delicate metal work and gears, turning in a eye-defying mandala. 

He stares at it, this beautiful mark that is  _ both  _ of them, and Tony says. “I want to get them. Your wings and my mark--I want them.” 

He doesn’t speak,  _ can’t _ speak, just leans down and kisses him, desperate and begging and adoring. 

~*~ 

The tattoo is beautiful, delicate and intricate and breathtaking. It sprawls across his hip, a wide arch of metal and wings that he can’t help but touch. 

He gets the same tattoo, places them on his forearms, where Tony carries the soulmarks of Rogers and Barnes. 

“It’s better,” he says. “That we chose each other.” 

Tony smiles, gentle and brilliant and Rhodey draw him close, kisses him, soft and sure. “I’ll always choose you. 


End file.
